to being secretary of defense. they are very close and i don't know that obama had a deep relationship with him, but there other ways in which his fingerprints are on the president's policies and afghanistan won the argument. two things here i would add on guns specifically. biden in a way is -- a messenger for obama and sectors that may not trust him. he's got working class roots from industrial pennsylvania. he's catholic. i guess that the white house sees him as a messenger to people who might be skeptical and have ideas of what obama's agenda is and that biden could be a better messenger on this. i hate to bring up the 2016 number, but i think you may see more opportunities for biden to step out and prove himself in his own standing if he wants to run for president. >> the one thing i would add is nobody understands personal tragedy and is able to speak to that in an emotional compelling way as joe biden. going back to what you were saying about very little hope of this package or really much of anything, passing it is republican house. what do you think the white house strategy is

it or not. and the number of companies that would really be affected from walmart to every defense contractor to giant health care companies, if their ability to collect money that is owed to them is then put in doubt, that triggers a whole, you know, range of activities of other people wanting to collect debts from them. >> sounds really scary. do me a favor, though, and crawl in to president obama's head for me and tell me why you think in 2006 he voted not to raise the debt ceiling and said the fact we're here today to debate raising the debt limit is a sign of leadership failure, the sign the u.s. government can't pay his own bills. what was he thinking there? >> voting against an increase of the debt kreeling is what you do in the opposition party. >> oh, okay. >> in congress. this is going back for the last many years. >> yeah. >> all the republicans in the senate voted for increases when bush was in office. they vote against it when obama is in office. and vice versa. the problem or challenges now is the house where republicans don't want to vote for it and we need them, you

of, you know, the state department and the defense department, will that help bring some of these lessons to bear? >> well, kerry and hagel saw the war firsthand in the delta, one of the areas where it was packed with civilians and where there were tremendous number of civilian casualties so i think that they did see some of the worst of the war. i would hope that having seen that up close and personal they'd be more reticent of taking this country to war. i think we have to hope for the best, that they can take that out of vietnam experience. i don't think that the carnage in today's wars is comparable to vietnam when it comes to civilians but we do know that civilians are still dying on a regular basis and still suffering a great deal and i'm afraid that, you know, if history is any guide we may not know the full story of that suffering for decades. >> all right. nick turse, thank you very much. >> thank you. >>> up next, the cyclist's favorite inaugural moments and never guess who picked one from the 1800s. it's not who you think. i'm heading to washington this weekend

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